I've unsurprisingly had no response from Supero who I bought it from, so I sent the device to the NZ service agents "Fonefix". Also unsurprisingly, because it's a parallel import, they don't cover the manufacturers warranty, so they quoted me _$579_ to replace the faulty circuit board, the entire phone only cost me $100 more than that back in August, so needless to say I'm not bothering with it. That's iPhone repair price territory.

So, given that I've now got a $600+ brick, my parallel import savings over the years now equate to roughly zero. The price I pay for getting cheap gadgets unfortunately. Lesson learnt, so I'll be sticking with my el-cheapo emergency backup phone until such time as I can afford to buy something better from Spark themselves.

I'll continue trying to get hold of Supero, but I'm not holding my breath.

LG are supposedly doing a pretty much no-questions-asked repair according to that article, but apparently only if it's a locally purchased device. I think 2 Degrees were the only TelCo that officially sold them here, and they kept it all very quiet for some reason.

Did the service agent you sent it to open it up? If so I am guessing you could get accused of an unauthorized repair attempt if this is noticeable. Be interesting how this turns out for you. But for that sort of priced good, NZ buying is the way to go, especially as you likely had to pay gst and duty on it anyway.